I meant to add these highlights from the July A Good Book and A Cup of Tea link party when I posted the new link-up last week, but it slipped my mind, so I am sharing a separate post today. I’ll get better at this as the link-up goes on!
This summer I am watching Angela Lansbury movies for the Summer of Angela.
This week I watched The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), which I had never seen before. I’ve also never read the book that it is based on.
I had to sit and process this one for a bit and also watch a comedy or two afterward.
Wow, what a creepy, dark, and unsettling film.
Yes, unsettling is the perfect word for this movie and while I am glad to see the second film that Angela received an Oscar nomination for, I don’t plan to watch it again.
I shuddered too many times while watching it.
First, a quick description of the movie for those who are not familiar with it.
From TCM.com, this one-sentence description tells us what we need to know about the movie:
“A man remains young and handsome while his portrait shows the ravages of age and sin.”
The movie is based on the book of the same name by Oscar Wilde, written in 1898. There is even a moment where the main character quotes Wilde.
The movie stars Angela, Hurd Hatfield, George Sanders, Donna Reed, and Peter Lawford.
Dorian Gray is a young man without any family who gets mixed up with a man who is a bit of a chauvinist, cynical jerk. This man, Lord Henry Wotton (George Sanders, who plays villains absolutely perfectly), comments on how awful it is to age when he is looking at a painting of Dorian being made by artist Basil Hallward.
Lord Henry, a man who enjoys manipulating the lives of others and talking down to women and everyone around him, says that youth is fleeting and that the pursuit of desire should be the only real goal in life. Dorian, who seems super impressionable to me, thinks about what Lord Henry has said and says that he would give his soul if the painting would grow old while he remained forever young.
Lord Henry tells him to be careful about making such a wish in front of his Egyptian statue of a cat.
Dorian decides to explore new places, experience new things, and later he visits a bar where he watches a beautiful young woman names Sibyl Vane (Angela) performing a song called Little Yellow Bird. He is enamored with her and her with him.
Consider yourself warned that the song she sings, Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird, is an earworm. I’ve been humming the thing all week!
He’s in love, but Lord Henry is cynical and mean and tells Dorian to give Sibyl a challenge. Invite her to stay overnight, and depending on what she decides, Dorian will know if she is virtuous or not.
Things will go downhill for Dorian after the outcome of the challenge. Tragedy strikes, causing him to become hardened to the world. He decides that living only for his own pleasure, no matter who it hurts, is the way to go in life.
I won’t spoil the whole movie in case you haven’t watched the movie or read the book, but want to. I will say: be prepared to be fairly depressed by the end.
I will say that two additional characters were added to this movie that were not in the book — a woman named Gladys (Donna Reed) who has loved Dorian since she was a child, and her boyfriend David Stone (Peter Lawford). Gladys was terribly annoying and stupid to me. They should have left her and David out, quite frankly.
The part of Dorian Gray is played by Hurd Hatfield.
His absolutely creepy and dead-behind-the-eyes expression is the central reason I felt unsettled by the movie.
I saw his demeanor as perfect for this part but one critic I read said it resulted in his character feeling too one-dimensional and detached.
“On all accounts, (director Alfred) Lewin micromanaged Hatfield’s every gesture (to the point of not letting the actor perform after four o’clock in the afternoon, for fear fatigue would show), resulting in a central performance that is appropriately strange, but which never engages,” wrote Richard Harlin Smith on TCM.com. “One doesn’t see what others see in this Dorian Gray, who seems as inflexible as a mortician’s wax even in his mysteriously protracted youth.”
I thought not emotionally engaging with anyone is the point of a character who essentially gives up his soul, feelings, and love for anything, to be as nasty as he wants to be (yes, a bit of a spoiler there).
The movie was only Hatfield’s second film (his first being Dragonseed from 1944).
Smith wrote in his review of the film on TCM that, “Hurd Hatfield, in his second screen appearance, was so effectively evil in the title role that it actually handicapped his career with casting directors.”
According to Hurd Hatfield Luv on Tumbler, Angela once said that Lewin would stop rolling the cameras once Hatfield made an obvious expression on his face. This was frustrating to Hurd because his usual acting style was animated and he wanted to perform the character like he was written in the novel.
Lewin’s wishes always overrode the wishes of the actors, though.
“Also to point out, halfway through the film Dorian said he wanted to be in control of his emotions and refrain from yielding to them,” the author of the Tumbler site wrote. They continued: “Here’s another possible reason on why Lewin wanted Hatfield to act with little feeling in this film. Now this is actually my conjecture, but it makes sense with my research. As many would understand, making strong facial expressions would wrinkle the face. Smile lines and crows’ feet form when happy. Forehead creases when worrying. Eyebrows close in and skin folds in between when angry. Bursting up in tears crying gives out the most unflattering face of all. To put it short, it’s impossible to look extraordinarily “beautiful” without scrunching the face.”
Ronald Bergen wrote in The Guardian that he interviewed Hatfield on time about his role in the film The Diary of a Chambermaid and the actor said he was glad to speak about something other than Dorian Gray.
Hatfield called the role both a blessing and a curse.
“A blessing in that it gave him a reputation; a curse in that he found it difficult to escape,” Bergen wrote.
After the movie, he was cast mainly as handsome, narcissistic young men.
Hatfield was ambivalent about having played Dorian Gray, according to the magazine Films in Review, feeling that it had typecast him. “You know, I was never a great beauty in Gray…and I never understood why I got the part and have spent my career regretting it.”
The casting director for The Picture of Dorian Gray, Robert Alton, referred Angela to the casting director for Gaslight. He saw her in the role of Sibyl, but also felt she might work for the maid in Gaslight. That role as the maid led to her first Oscar nomination.
Angela’s role as Sibyl was her second Oscar nomination and came only a year after the first.
“Great send off,” she joked in an interview with the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. “Everything went down hill from there.”
By the time Angela worked on The Picture of Dorian Gray she had filmed Gaslight and National Velvet and had started to become used to working on a set. And she meant “working.” She said in the SAG Foundation interview that she was very conscientious as a young person. She was conscientious of how she needed to be professional for the sake of the other actors and the film overall.
This was both a good and a bad thing.
“I never had any fun. I never goofed off,” she said. “I missed a lot of fun along the way but perhaps in the end it contributed to me to being able to build such a very strong base for what would was to later become an enormously successful career.”
Facts and Triva about the movie:
Lansbury’s mother appears in the movie as “The Duchess” in the dinner scene at “Lady Agatha’s”. (source Jay’s Classic Movie Blog)
The hideous portrait of Dorian shown later in the movie was painted by Ivan Le Lorraine Albright. According to TCM.com, he was hired after director Lewin saw a painting of his at the Art Institute of Chicago entitled That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do. It is not owned by the Art Institute of Chicago.
A scene in the movie staged beneath a wildly swinging chain lamp was an effect that would be duplicated by Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho some fifteen years later.
Several years after this movie premiered, a friend of Hurd Hatfield’s bought the Henrique Medina painting of young Dorian Gray that was used in this movie at an MGM auction, and gave it to Hatfield. On March 21, 2015, the portrait was put up for auction at Christie’s in New York City (from the Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth) with a pre-auction estimate of between five thousand and eight thousand dollars. It sold for one hundred forty-nine thousand dollars. (source IMdB)
Oscar Wilde’s Dorian was blond-haired, blue-eyed, and highly emotional, but Writer and Director Albert Lewin’s conception of Dorian was of an icy, distant character.
The dark musical piece that is heard repeatedly is Frédéric Chopin’s “Prelude in D Minor”, the last of the twenty-four pieces of “Opus 28”. (Source IMdB)
Writer and Director Albert Lewin was obsessed with retakes. In this movie, he asked for one hundred and ten retakes and ended up using only one. (Source IMdB)
Basil Rathbone campaigned in vain for the part of Lord Henry Wotton and believed that his typecasting as Sherlock Holmes was the reason he failed to get it. MGM’s loaning of Rathbone to Universal Pictures to play Holmes was very profitable for the studio, another reason for not casting him. (Source IMdB)
According to Angela, a friend of hers, Michael Dyne, was considered for the role of Dorian Gray. Dyne suggested Lansbury for the role of Sibyl Vane. The casting director liked her for the part and suggested her to George Cukor for Gaslight (1944). She saw Cukor and Writer and Director Albert Lewin the same day and was cast for her first two movies. (source IMdb)
My overall view of the movie:
This movie creeped me out immensely and made me very sad. It was extremely thought-provoking. As I mentioned above, the movie left me with a very unsettled feeling. I didn’t really want to keep going at points but knew I had to find out how it ended.
The cinematography and the use of light and shadows was amazing. The best example of this is during a climatic turning point in the movie that involves a very dark action by Dorian. As the act is completed he stands with a light swinging back and forth above him and it’s casting light on his face, then it swings back and he’s in darkness. The shadows around and behind him move in the pattern of a monster’s mouth, as if signaling he’s been officially swallowed by and turned into a monster.
Another shocking part of this movie is the use of color. Yes, the movie was filmed and presented in black and white, but there are three scenes that are shown in brilliant, and later terrifying, technicolor. You have been warned because a couple of the images truly are terrifying.
I probably wouldn’t watch this movie again, but only because it disturbed me, not because it is a good movie. It is a good movie, and it is too good in presenting that icky, dark, and demoralizing feeling it’s meant to present.
Have you seen this movie? What did you think of it?
Cat from Cat’s Wire wrote about her views of it here and she does have spoilers, but it is such a good, interesting post. I loved it. If you’ve already seen the movie or read the book, definitely hop over to her blog.
Left on my Summer of Angela list for August are:
August 15 – A Life At Stake
August 22 – All Fall Down (keep an eye out. I might switch this one up.)
August 29 – Something for Everyone
If you want to read about some of the other movies I watched, you can find them here:
Here I am with another recap of an episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977.
As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series, the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season, they started to join together. Eventually, they began to phase out the Nancy episodes and focus more on The Hardy Boys. A new actress also started as Nancy when Pamela Sue Martin became disenchanted with the parts that were being written for her character.
*Disclaimer: These posts do spoil the entire episode. Also, I do joke around a lot about the cheesiness or plot holes or the “weird” 70s hairstyles, clothes or music, but please know it is all in good fun. I have fun watching these and the mysteries are often very interesting. Please don’t leave me comments enraged that I am making fun of your favorite show. *wink* I make fun of my favorite shows too!
In this episode, focused on Nancy Drew and titled, The Mystery of the Ghostwriter’s Cruise, we start out with people loading on to a cruise ship.
First, we see the ship with people waving from the decks and then we see a scrapbook with photos featuring an elderly man and the headline under the one photo reads: “Famous Mystery Writer John Addam to Set Sail.”
Underneath the photo there is a handwritten note which reads: “Castling to protect king — two moves to checkmate — this will be your last cruise, Mr. Addams. Your going to . . .” A hand begins writing and finishes the sentence by adding the word “die.”
I should note here that I copied that sentence verbatim from the threatening note in the journal (as you can see by the photo) and really wanted to go back and change “your” to “you’re.”
Imagine the editors not noticing that error before this episode aired. Or maybe they never noticed. Ha!
Immediately after this scene we see an elderly man and a young woman standing next to him and they are being interviewed by a TV reporter. The reporter asks the man, who we can see is Mr. Addams, the mystery writer we saw in the photos in the first scene, what made him decide to retire.
What she actually says is, “What finally decided you to do it?”
Um…huh? I don’t know about the writers of this show sometimes, but anyhow….
Mr. Addams answers that writing is getting boring now. “There isn’t a new twist anywhere.”
She asks him if this means there will never be another book featuring the main characters from his mystery books and he tells her she clearly hasn’t read his books because he killed off one character, retired the other one, and the third has simply gotten too old to do anything.
The camera pans to Nancy and her father, Carson, and friends George Fayne and Ned Nickerson. Ned is carrying all the luggage asking why the girls have so much if they are only going on the cruise for a week.
We switch quickly back to the interview and the author is mellowing a bit as he answers questions. He also refers to his niece Cathy as being his main helper with his books these days.
Nancy and the crew are now listening in the background and soon Mr. Addams ends the interview so he can meet up with them.
It isn’t clear why, but Nancy and George seem to be going on this cruise with Mr. Addams. At first, I thought maybe he is an uncle to one of them but that’s never really made clear, so I believe he is simply a friend of Carson’s.
This is one of the first times I’ve seen Nancy act like she and Ned might be more than friends. As they are saying goodbye Ned expresses concern that she will get herself in trouble and she says she doesn’t plan to and then assures him she will be safe on the cruise, leans up, and gives him a quick peck on the mouth.
Oh. Um. Well then.
Carson tells Mr. Addams to take care of the girls and Mr. Addams answers, “I’ll certainly do that.”
This whole time there is a man with either an amused or creepy smile on his face, we aren’t sure which, watching both the interview and the gathering of Mr. Addams and Nancy and her friends and Dad.
This will start an interesting episode-long tactic of making the viewers question who is suspicious and who isn’t, by the camera focusing on a person frowning, smiling, glaring, or simply looking, well, suspicious while watching Mr. Addams and the girls. This is done a number of times making us guess who was behind the eventual threats against Mr. Addams.
Let’s get back to the story, though.
On their way to find their rooms, the party is stopped by the captain. He tells Mr. Addams what a pleasure it is to have him on board and invites them all to dine with him at his table that night.
After that praise fest it’s on to their rooms but not before we have the suspenseful music and a pause by the captain with him watching the group walk away. Huh…is he also suspicious? And then there is a young woman watching them too. Is she suspicious or just a fan?
They were really dropping the red herrings left and right from the start in this one.
After the captain, the group run into George the activities director. He’s excited to meet George since his name is also George. George and George. Ha. Ha. He clearly thinks George is cute and lets her know he can’t wait to see her later during the cruise. He creepily touches her face, trailing his finger down her cheek, and says “There’s a hidden depth to you….”
Her expression cracks me up. It is a mix of flattered and horrified — pretty much how most viewers probably feel watching that moment. *snort laugh*
Once they finally get to the room there is a man waiting for them and he is not welcoming. He is the man who we saw at the beginning of the episode watching the interview and he says his name is Peter Howard. He has a tape recorder and starts smooth talking Mr. Addams, telling him he wants an interview with him about the memoir he’s planning to write. Mr. Addams says he isn’t going to be writing a memoir and tells the man to get out.
George and Cathy go to explore the ship, leaving Nancy and Mr. Addams in his cabin. Mr. Addams says he’s going to take a nap and settles back in a chair. Before he can fall asleep, though, Nancy finds the scrapbook with the threat written in it. She reads it to him and he sort of shrugs and says, “You don’t go through life like a battering ram without making some enemies.” He doesn’t like the idea someone may be after him but he also thinks it might be a prank so he decides to nap and Nancy decides to go meet up with George and Cathy.
Mr. Addams asks her to leave one light on in the cabin because he doesn’t like to wake up in pure darkness and when she goes to turn a lamp on, a huge spark flies out, knocking her down.
There is a fade out as the show goes to commercial break and when we “return” (there are no commercials where I watched this on a YouTube channel where someone uploaded all the episodes), George and Cathy are back and Nancy is sitting on the couch with a glass of water.
Everyone is concerned about Nancy and the captain steps in because he’s probably concerned about his ship’s reputation with the light in a celebrity’s cabin almost zapping the life out of someone. A ship electrician has arrived and says the lamp was definitely rewired to it would zap someone on purpose.
Mr. Addams points out how bad the situation is but how it could have been even worse if he had touched the lamp since he is an old man with a heart condition.
The electrician is a fan of Mr. Addam’s and lets him know how the fact someone targeted him is like a scene from one of his books. Wow. I bet Mr. Addams had no idea the attack was similar to one of his books. Good thing that electrician was there to tell him.
Viewers are left feeling that there is something not quite right about this electrician but can’t put their finger on it. He goes on the list of suspects too at this point.
As if we don’t have enough suspense, we will soon find out that the captain is worried about what could be deadly fog settling around the ship. He tells the crew to keep him abreast of the situation and then heads to dinner.
Throughout the episode we keep being shown a person in a long trench coat moving around the ship. We see them again as Nancy is on her way to dinner. They are cutting some wires and putting what looks like a bomb somewhere in the bottom of the ship. Eek. This episode is intense and I’m not kidding.
As in any Nancy Drew episode of the series, we have another moment where an older man seems to be flirting with her. This time she’s dancing with Mr. Howard who wants to know how well she knows Mr. Addams. What’s a little icky about this scene is that it’s like Nancy is flirting back with the man. He’s old enough to be her father! *gag sound*
“I’m not a stepping stone to him, you know, Mr. Howard,” she says coyly.
I’m sure that’s not how the writers meant it, though, really, so I’m just teasing.
Anyhow, they chat a bit about how she knows him and she says she knows his niece Cathy more, which is something I’m just learning about because for this whole episode I’m assuming Mr. Addams is friends with Carson.
Anyhow, Mr. Howard says he’ll get what he wants from Mr. Addams, mainly by intimidation. He’s smiling but…hmmm….is he the mystery note writer?
Nancy escapes Mr. Howard by bumping into the electrician or crew member, whose name is Tony by the way, and asking him for a dance before questioning him if there could be a stowaway on the ship. The man says there couldn’t be and the two continue to dance while Cathy looks on sadly. Her uncle encourages her to go out and dance but she simply looks sad and declines.
A girl named Adrienne approaches Cathy and Mr. Addams at their table and tells Cathy she went to school with her brother.
Cathy invites Adrienne to sit with them, and a chat ensues.
On the dance floor, the Georges are dancing together and the male George says the female George (yes, this does sound like the start of a joke…), “You know George, you’re very attractive.” And the female George responds, “You are too, George. In your own way.”
Ouch.
We flip to a scene with Mr. Addams out on the deck of the ship for a smoke. Suddenly a voice starts speaking over the loudspeaker, telling him that this is his last cruise, etc. The voice is echoing and s female voice. The voice taunts him in reminding him of what happened to his victims in his books. He is looking freaked out as the voice tells him he is going to die.
He runs into Nancy and asks her if she can hear the voice. She can and they start to look for the source of it and find a cassette recorder broadcasting through the loudspeaker.
Nancy points out that the recorder looks like the one Peter Howard had and suggests that he was hoping to sneak up behind Mr. Addams when Mr. Addams was looking for the source of the voice.
Cathy is out on deck next and says she heard the voice too.
“Whoever did it made a very big mistake,” Nancy says and stares at Cathy pointedly. Cathy stares back. Also pointedly. Dun-dun-duuuuuuuun.
Nancy and Mr. Addams rush to the captain’s office to play him the tape but when they hit play, the recording is gone.
Now they both feel stupid and leave with their heads hanging down. The captain watches them leave with a little smirk.
There are a lot of smirking people in this episode.
To speed this recap up a bit I’ll skip ahead a bit. After discussing that this all sounds a lot like a book Mr. Addams wrote called The Mystery of the Ghostwriter’s Cruise (gasp! The episode title!), Nancy goes to look for the book in the ship library because, yeah, sure, a ship is going to have an extensive library with just the book she needs. She can’t find it and we see the person with the gloves and the trench coat throw the book overboard.
Moving ahead again, Nancy bumps into Tony, literally, and he looks at her with “come hither eyes” and says, “I heard the captain say you think someone wired that lamp on purpose.” She says she does and he … yes, you guessed it…smirks.
“Who would do a thing like that?” he asks, suggesting she’s just some silly girl.
He tells her he will help all he can but to please be careful “in case there is some nut running around the ship.”
Are you the nut, Tony? Be honest now…you did think it was important to tell Mr. Addams you read all his books
Adrienne has somehow wiggled her way into the show and is now playing chess with Mr. Addams. She seems a bit miffed when the old man wins.
Nancy looks at the scrapbook with the threat in it again to see if she can figure out who might be making the threats and finds an article about a Martin Carroll who sued Mr. Addams for stealing his idea for a book.
When Nancy asks, Mr. Addams says Martin Carroll would be about 50 now. He also says he didn’t steal the man’s idea. They were working on the book together and Martin Carroll simply flaked out and walked away. There was also never enough evidence for the lawsuit to go forward.
Nancy begins to suspect that Martin Carroll is actually Peter Howard.
She somehow uses a CB radio to contact her dad and ask for more information about Martin Carroll. The captain is listening in and looks very concerned about her conversation.
Nancy soon gets a telegram for her dad telling her that Martin Carroll died six months earlier. He also tells her he will be meeting her on the first island the cruise ship is stopping at.
Nancy then finds someone leaving Mr. Addams room. She chases the person into the belly of the ship and is knocked off a metal ladder and is about to fall to her death when Tony shows up to rescue her.
Tony tells her she needs to be careful (he’s the new Ned, I guess) and then we are in the bridge and the captain sees on the monitors that they are about to hit a tidal wave. He wants the crew to tell the passengers what is going on without alarming them.
In between all this, George (the female one) is asked to sing by George (the male one). We listen to a subdued 70’s style song but they are interrupted by crew members telling everyone to get their lifejackets on.
Nancy smells a hoax though. She runs to tell the captain that she thinks the tidal wave is a hoax and that it isn’t going to hit. While she tries to convince him, we get cut away shots of Mr. Howard smirking while he drinks some kind of alcohol and Cathy looking creepy.
Turns out Nancy is right and someone has hacked the radar. But why?
Nancy has to find out.
She asks Tony if he knows anything about the Carroll case since he was such a huge fan of Mr. Addams. He says yes and that Martin Carroll did write one book and it was called The Mystery of the Haunted Cruise.
Nancy rushes to the ship library again and — it’s a miracle — the book is there! She reads the ending of the book and finds out that the character in the book is backed against a railing before being killed. She flips to the front of the book and sees a dedication that reads, “To my wife Celeste and my daughter …. ADRIENNE??!!!”
Nancy rushes out of the library and then we are sent to the deck where George and George are talking but that isn’t important — what is important is that Nancy runs out looking for Mr. Addams.
George tells her that he’s walking on deck with Adrienne.
“She’s the one who has been doing all this!” Nancy cries. “Get the captain right away.”
Suddenly we are on the deck where Adrienne shoves Mr. Addams toward the ship railing and declares he killed her father.
“He was a broken man, Mr. Addams in health and spirit,” Adrienne tells him. “I’ve lived under your shadow for years. Your name was all I ever heard in our house. My father was obsessed with you. You ruined his life. You robbed him of the success that might have changed his life.”
“And you wanted me to relive the events of that book?” Mr. Addams asks.
Adrienne says, “That’s right. Everything the way it was.”
Mr. Addams suggests that she couldn’t kill him, though, not really. Adrienne disagrees and is about to shove him over the railing when Nancy stops her at the same time the captain and his first mate are walking up to the scene.
“I don’t think she would have gone through with it,” Mr. Addams says, an optimist, despite being a grump through much of the episode.
All is well now, but Nancy and George decide they’re going to get off the ship on the island where Ned and Mr. Drew are meeting them.
Mr. Addams is going to finish his cruise, and he decides not to press charges against Adrienne, instead asking that she get mental help.
He even grants an interview with Mr. Howard.
And with that the episode is over.
As I said, this was one of the more intense and exciting ones.
Up next for a recap is Episode 13 of the series with The Hardy Boys and entitled The Secret of the Jade Kwan Yin.
If you want to read some of my recaps of other episodes of this show, you can find them by doing a search for Hardy Boys Nancy Drew in the search bar on the right sidebar.
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
Welcome to the A Good Book & A Cup of Tea Monthly Link Party for book and reading posts! Each link party will be open for a month.
1. For Bloggers, you can link unlimited posts related to books and reading. These can be posts about what you’re reading, book reviews, books you’ve added to your shelf, reading habits, what you’ve been reading, about trips to bookstore, etc. You get the drift.
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3. Please visit at least two other bloggers on this list and comment on their posts. Have fun! Interact! Get some book recommendations.
4. Readers can click the blue button below to visit blog posts.
5. If you add a link you are giving me permission to share and link back to your post(s).
This week’s prompt is: Beach/Beachy Reads (Share books you’d take to the beach OR books that take place at the beach.)
I don’t know if anyone else would call these books beachy reads, but I do! Because I am weird. Ha!
The Secret of the Amish Diary by Rachael Phillips
(A fun mystery that I consider a quick read.)
The people of Pleasant Creek are delighted to welcome Liz Eckardt to their picturesque country town as she reopens the Olde Mansion Inn bed and breakfast. But a new start and a simpler life aren’t the only reasons Liz is setting down roots in the heart of Indiana’s Amish community. She is quietly embarking on a quest to find answers about her late mother’s secret life growing up Amish.
Becoming the town’s new innkeeper helps Liz ingrain herself among the townsfolk while searching for the truth about her Amish relatives. That is until she finds herself in the middle of the mysterious murder of one of the inn’s guests. Is there a connection between the death of her troublesome lodger and the truth about her long-lost family?
Live and Let Chai by Bree Baker
(Takes black in a tourist beach town so a perfect beach read.)
Trouble is brewing in Everly’s new café. Can she bag the culprit?
Life hasn’t been so sweet for Everly Swan over the past couple of years, but now that she is back in her seaside hometown and the proud owner of a little iced tea shop and café right on the beach, things are finally starting to look up–until a curmudgeonly customer turns up dead on the boardwalk. With one of her hallmark glass tea jars lying right next to him and an autopsy that reports poison in his system, it doesn’t look good for Everly or her brand new business.
As the townspeople of Charm, formerly so welcoming and homey, turn their back on Everly, she fights to dig up clues about who could have had it in for the former town councilman. With a maddeningly handsome detective discouraging her from uncovering leads and a series of anonymous attacks on Everly and her business, it will take everything she’s got to keep this mystery from boiling over.
Gone Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright
(A middle grade read that takes place in summer and has a perfect Summer feel and storyline.)
Summer has a magic all its own.
When Portia sets out for a visit with her cousin Julian, she expects fun and adventure, but of the usual kind: exploring in the woods near Julian’s house, collecting stones and bugs, playing games throughout the long, lazy days.
But this summer is different.
On their first day exploring, Portia and Julian discover an enormous boulder with a mysterious message, a swamp choked with reeds and quicksand, and on the far side of the swamp…a ghost town.
Once upon a time the swamp was a splendid lake, and the fallen houses along its shore an elegant resort community. But though the lake is long gone and the resort faded away, the houses still hold a secret life: two people who have never left Gone-Away…and who can tell the story of what happened there.
Clueless at the Coffee Station by Bee Littlefield
(Just a good mystery and perfect for the beach to me.)
Betti Bryant knows she’s not supposed to be a barista five years after graduating from college, but her life is actually super adorable—except for the part where she has to endure her ex-boyfriend’s musical rendition of their breakup at the coffee shop’s Open Mic Night every Friday.
When an entire local art collection is stolen from the cafe during his performance, Betti sees her chance to persuade her panicked boss to cancel Open Mic Night, at least until the crime is solved. Instead, he announces plans to sell the beloved cafe to a real estate developer, who will demolish it. Betti believes her boss will change his mind once justice is served. So, armed with a list of drink orders from the night of the crime and the sleuthiest outfit she can find at the thrift store, she sets out to investigate the theft herself.
If she fails, she’s promised her sister she’ll accept whatever non-adorable entry-level corporate job she can get, abandoning her ideals about finding her own path in life. The Coffee Station will close forever.
The Fast Lane by Sharon Peterson
(A fun rom-com that involves a road trip, but not a beach. Still a nice, light read.)
He’s the only person who can give me a ride to my brother’s wedding, and he’s also the one man I absolutely CANNOT have feelings for. My brother’s best friend is strictly off limits… Isn’t he?
I should have known my mom would go totally overboard packing for my brother’s big day. But much like my last break-up, I’d been optimistic (in denial) that it would all work out for me. Now, I can’t fit into the car. “Don’t worry,” my brother says, “I asked Theo to give you a ride.”
I flush all over and almost drop my phone. This is a BIG problem.
With his neatly trimmed stubble, fierce protectiveness and an affinity for plaid shirts rivalled only by his love of hiking, I’ve always had a crush on Theo. As a teenager, I’d even declared my feelings in a tragically bad poem. The rejection almost ended our friendship, and I’ll be taking that crippling embarrassment to my grave.
He’s the last person I want to be alone with on a six-day road trip; especially since I swore off men after my last relationship went up in flames. It would be a terrible idea anyway; he only sees me as his best friend’s little sister.
But as we fight over the playlist and are forced to share a night together when his car dies, it’s not distance that makes my heart grow fonder, it’s close proximity. Two thousand miles of flirting has my heart racing in the fast lane. Is it all in my head, or does Theo feel the same?
Will this be our second chance to go the distance, or will everything blow up in my face in the middle of my brother’s wedding?
Murder in An Irish Village by Carlene O’Connor
(This one also doesn’t take place at a beach but it is a fun read with lovable characters and full of mystery.)
In the small village of Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, Naomi’s Bistro has always been a warm and welcoming spot to visit with neighbors, enjoy some brown bread and tea, and get the local gossip. Nowadays twenty-two-year-old Siobhán O’Sullivan runs the family bistro named for her mother, along with her five siblings, after the death of their parents in a car crash almost a year ago.
It’s been a rough year for the O’Sullivans, but it’s about to get rougher. One morning, as they’re opening the bistro, they discover a man seated at a table, dressed in a suit as if for his own funeral, a pair of hot pink barber scissors protruding from his chest. With the local garda suspecting the O’Sullivans and their business in danger of being shunned—murder tends to spoil the appetite—it’s up to feisty redheaded Siobhán to solve the crime and save her beloved brood.
The Gardener’s Plot by Deborah J. Benoit
(A mystery is always a good beach read in my opinion.)
A woman helps set up a community garden in the Berkshires, only to find a body in one of the plot’s on opening day.
After life threw Maggie Walker a few curveballs, she’s happy to be back in the small, Berkshires town where she spent so much time as a child. Marlowe holds many memories for her, and now it also offers a fresh start. Maggie has always loved gardening, so it’s only natural to sign on to help Violet Bloom set up a community garden.
When opening day arrives, Violet is nowhere to be found, and the gardeners are restless. Things go from bad to worse when Maggie finds a boot buried in one of the plots… and there’s a body attached to it. Suddenly, the police are looking for a killer and they keep asking questions about Violet. Maggie doesn’t believe her friend could do this, and she’s going to dig up the dirt needed to prove it.
The Gardener’s Plot takes readers to the heart of the Berkshires and introduces amateur sleuth Maggie Walker in Deborah J. Benoit’s Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award-winning debut.
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
(I loved this one. It’s a warm, fun, thought-provoking but also humorous book. It’s my favorite by L.M., honestly)
The Blue Castle is a heartwarming and enchanting novel written by LM Montgomery, the author of the beloved Anne of Green Gables series. The novel follows the story of Valancy Stirling, a shy and unmarried woman who has always lived under the thumb of her overbearing family.
When Valancy discovers that she has a serious heart condition and only a year to live, she decides to take control of her life and do all the things she’s always dreamed of but never had the courage to pursue. She starts by falling in love with a charismatic stranger and embarking on a new and exciting adventure. But as Valancy’s life takes unexpected twists and turns, she learns the true meaning of love, courage, and self-discovery. The Blue Castle is a charming and inspiring story about finding happiness and fulfillment in unexpected places and embracing life to the fullest.
By Book or By Crook by Eva Gates
(It’s been a while since I read this one but I remember it being a fast moving and light mystery.)
For ten years Lucy has enjoyed her job poring over rare tomes of literature for the Harvard Library, but she has not enjoyed the demands of her family’s social whorl or her sort-of-engagement to the staid son of her father’s law partner. But when her ten-year relationship implodes, Lucy realizes that the plot of her life is in need of a serious rewrite.
Calling on her aunt Ellen, Lucy hopes that a little fun in the Outer Banks sun—and some confections from her cousin Josie’s bakery—will help clear her head. But her retreat quickly turns into an unexpected opportunity when Aunt Ellen gets her involved in the lighthouse library tucked away on Bodie Island.
Lucy is thrilled to land a librarian job in her favorite place in the world. But when a priceless first edition Jane Austen novel is stolen and the chair of the library board is murdered, Lucy suddenly finds herself ensnared in a real-life mystery—and she’s not so sure there’s going to be a happy ending….
9. Meet Your Baker by Ellie Alexander
(Just a light mystery with a lot of baking.)
Welcome to Torte-a friendly, small-town family bake shop where the treats are so good that, sometimes, it’s criminal…
After graduating from culinary school, Juliet Capshaw returns to her quaint hometown of Ashland, Oregon, to heal a broken heart and help her mom at the family bakery. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is bringing in lots of tourists looking for some crumpets to go with their heroic couplets. But when one of Torte’s customers turns up dead, there’s much ado about murder…
The victim is Nancy Hudson, the festival’s newest board member. A modern-day Lady Macbeth, Nancy has given more than a few actors and artists enough reasons to kill her…but still. The silver lining? Jules’s high school sweetheart, Thomas, is the investigator on the case. His flirtations are as delicious as ever, and Jules can’t help but want to have her cake and eat it too. But will she have her just desserts? Murder might be bad for business, but love is the sweetest treat of all…
Hadley Beckett’s Next Dish by Bethany Turner
(A fun rom-com with a lot of back and forth witty banter between the two main characters.)
Celebrity chef Maxwell Cavanaugh is known for many things: his multiple Michelin stars, his top-rated Culinary Channel show To the Max, and most of all his horrible temper. Hadley Beckett, host of the Culinary Channel’s other top-rated show, At Home with Hadley, is beloved for her Southern charm and for making her viewers feel like family.
When Max experiences a very public temper tantrum, he’s sent packing to get his life in order. When he returns, career in shambles, his only chance to get back on TV and in the public’s good graces is to work alongside Hadley.
As these polar-opposite celeb chefs begin to peel away the layers of public persona and reputation, they will not only discover the key ingredients for getting along, but also learn the secret recipe for unexpected forgiveness . . . and maybe even love. In the meantime, hide the knives.
Fan-favorite Bethany Turner serves up a heaping helping of humor and romance with this thoroughly modern story centered on cooking, enemies, and second chances.
Here I am with another recap of an episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977.
As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series, the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season, they started to join together. Eventually, they began to phase out the Nancy episodes and focus more on The Hardy Boys. A new actress also started as Nancy when Pamela Sue Martin became disenchanted with the parts that were being written for her character.
This week I watched a Hardy Boys centered episode called Wipe Out.
This episode was one of the better ones, which I seem to be writing a lot more as I continue through the show. It seems the show got a lot better as it went on. Episodes still have some cheesy moments, sure, but the mysteries are better than in the beginning.
I spent the entire first half of this episode thinking our boys might have gone rogue and had become criminals. Luckily, things started to make sense at the halfway point.
We open this episode with a surfing competition underway and soon learn that Frank is in the competition and the boys are in Hawaii.
They aren’t only in Hawaii, they have found two girls who are hanging all over them and going to luaus with them. Of course Joe (Shaun Cassidy) is asked to sing at one of them and of course Frank wanders off to investigate something while Joe is singing. Frank’s wandering off continues a series-long inside joke.
After Frank’s competing, which brings him accolades and a chance to compete for a bigger prize, the boys head back to their hotel room and find out they’ve been robbed. This sends them to the police station where a cop sort of brushes them off because he says their stuff is long gone by now.
This will mean the boys will to call their dad, Fenton Hardy, and see if he can wire them some money for the rest of their trip. Joe says Frank has to call him because he’s the one that wanted to come and be in the surfing competition.
Frank has a better idea and the next thing we now the guys are breaking into a room after swiping the key of a couple at the hotel. I watched in horror as our heroes started loading up bags with the jewelry and money of the people and even more horror as they went to dinner and ordered big ticket items, telling the waitress they were fine on money.
She knew they’d been robbed, though, so she was pretty horrified like me, suspicious of how they got the money to pay for their meal.
This episode did a very good job of keeping us guessing what was going to happen next and tossing in characters we thought were going to bust the boys somehow.
We had hotel cops and town cops coming after them and suspecting them of theft. Then we eventually discover there is a burglary ring, and we wonder how the boys got themselves wrapped up in it. Or did they? What is going on?
Even the girls they are seeing are starting to ask questions, like why they have a pair of fancy binoculars that look like some stolen by a couple at the hotel.
Usually I give spoilers in these posts but today I won’t because it might be fun if you want to watch it later on your own and find out what was really going on.
If you like listening to Shaun Cassidy sing you’ll get your chance a few times in this episode, especially at the beginning and end when he is singing Beach Boys songs.
The joke about Frank never hearing Joe sing continues on as Joe keeps trying to play a cassette for Frank so he can finally hear the performance. That was a fun gag but less fun was having to see Shaun’s short-shorts and hair leg every single time they focused on the cassette player in his hand.
The surfing scenes were a lot of fun to watch and I have a feeling that young ladies back then just loved to see Parker Stevenson running in and out of the waves. I will say that they kept the show very chaste because he always wore a shirt. There was one scene where Shaun was shirtless while he was rescuing Parker …er.. Frank and I’m guessing the young ladies would have liked that.
You can find the posts I’ve written about other Hard Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries shows by searching on the search bar to the right.
Up next I’ll be watching a Nancy Drew centered mystery, The Mystery of the Ghostwriter’s Cruise.
I’m the type of person who has never liked summer unless I can spend most of it in a pool. This year, though, we don’t have the pool we had before at my parents. Maintaining it has become too much for my dad with all his mounting health issues and it’s hard for us to maintain it the way he would like.
The decision to take it down was made a couple of weeks ago and it’s been very sad to walk out back and not see it. This past week my dad and son put up a small pool that our neighbors gave us a couple of years ago but it is a ton smaller than the last one.
It will at least be something that we can sit in, almost like a hot tub, when it is super hot out at least. Of course, I have to get myself in the pool without injuring myself. I am short and round so climbing in and out of a pool without a ladder, even when it is a shorter pool, can be a challenge. I did manage to get in the pool while it was filling on Thursday. It was nice to sit in it and watch Little Miss play and splash around. It was less fun trying to get back out again, especially since I needed to use the little girl’s room.
It was only comical after the fact, of course.
We are looking for a small ladder or step stool that will make getting in and out easier for all of us.
Last week was very busy for us, compared to our usual schedule in the summer.
Little Miss and I went to a library event and her 4-H Wildlife Club on Monday. On Tuesday we went to VBS but had a not-so-great experience there so on Wednesday we went to my parents to help clean. We went back on Thursday.
Yesterday and today, we stayed home and watched movies and TV, read books, ate watermelon, cooked dinner, bathed the dog, and tried our best to just relax.
Tomorrow The Husband and I are celebrating 23 years of marriage, so we are going out to dinner and to a used bookstore. Yes, we are that exciting. We both love books, though, and the little village where the bookstore is located is very picturesque so it should be a nice day.
Next week The Husband is on vacation and we have a few day trips planned but nothing very exciting. He and the kids are most excited about seeing the new Superman movie, but I’m really not that excited so I might sit this one out.
While typing this blog post up, Microsoft’s One Drive suggested I look at some photos from this same date five years ago.
Here are those photos:
These are from a trip we took a friend’s farm for me to take some photos for them and to sell for stock photography. I don’t know why but my dad took me out with the kids and on the way home he took the long way back and we ended up with a flat tire. Luckily, he knows how to change tires, but we had to wait a bit while he did that. While we waited there was a wonderful sunset for us to watch.
It was fun to visit the friend and see all her cows and the creamery she had opened. Sadly, life circumstances led to the creamery being closed and the cows being moved but her sons are still involved in farming and in showing cows for 4H.
In closing, I’ll leave us all with a quick reminder of how we need some breaks from all the hard stuff in the news. I read a couple of reminders this week that we as humans are not meant to consume all this information about the tragedies in the world all at once. Our minds are not infinite enough to handle all the grief, all the horror, all the fear on our own.
My advice to myself and to you is to take breaks from it all.
Don’t take it all in at once.
Just because we can know everything that is going on these days, doesn’t mean we need to.
Read a book. Watch a nice movie. Take a walk outside. Play with your kids and grandkids. Pet your dog and/or cat.
Sing some hymns.
We can’t ignore all the bad news, of course, but in the end we have to leave it in the hands of the only one who can carry it all.
How was your week last week? I hope it went well and I hope you have a good week this week.
Welcome to my June newsletter! That’s right. I’m going to try to do this once a month again and here on my main blog instead of Substack. I’ll have a page set up for you to find past newsletters.
All three Gladwynn books on sale
All three ebooks in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series are on sale this week on Amazon.
You can read descriptions of each of the books at the links.
Update on book four in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series
I’m working on book four of the Gladwynn Grant series but I wouldn’t say I am working on it steadly.
Alas, I am working on it here and there, but I have plenty of ideas. I hope to release it in October and will have a cover reveal by the end of July.
The book will be called Gladwynn Grant Goes Back To School. There will be a mystery, of course, since this is a mystery series. I can tell you that it will involve the local superintendent and that another family member of Gladwynn’s might show up for a visit. One we haven’t met yet.
There will be, of course, just a touch of romance like the other books.
I’ll have a description of the book by next month’s newsletter.
Admiring my roses
I always look forward to when the flowers bloom in our yard and this year was no different. The roses were beautiful this year but didn’t seem to last as long. The heatwave we had this week and the fact I failed to water them didn’t help.
Here are a few photos of them while they were blooming.
A Giveaway
I always had fun doing giveaways on my Substack Newsletter so I thought I’d do that with this newsletter. I would like to send one person a paperback copy of Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing.
If you are interested in a copy you can simply tell me what your favorite book genre is in the comments and I will randomly choose a winner by next week.
Find me on social media:
I wanted to close by reminding readers of my newsletters that I am on YouTube now (still figuring it out and only doing shorts for now). You can find my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@goodbooksandtea
I want to thank everyone who supports my writing, whether here on the blog or by borrowing or buying my books, or just reading them at all. It really means a lot to me since writing is a distraction for me from other stresses in life.
To me adventure means experiencing something different from the normal everyday. It’s something unique that captures my attention and makes me excited to see what is coming next.
2. What are your thoughts on tipping? What businesses or service providers do you regularly tip? Do you resent being asked if you’d like to add a tip? What about when a suggested amount is presented?
I support tipping because many waiters and waitresses do not get paid a ton an rely on tips. Our family tips most frequently at restaurants. We don’t get food deliveries where we live now but we used to give a small tip to the pizza delivery man if we had the cash on us. I don’t really like when a suggested amount is presented because then I feel like I absolutely have to give that amount but I can understand why they might offer a suggested amount.
3. I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream…do we? Is ice cream a favorite treat at your house? What’s your favorite flavor? Regular, soft serve, gelato, sherbet, or some sort of non-dairy version of ice cream…what’s your pleasure?
I am lactose intolerant but still love dairy ice cream. I can take a medicine like Lactaid before I eat dairy, but sometimes don’t do it like I should. Why? I have no idea. I guess I am a rebel! A rebel who suffers later!
Because I have a corn allergy, I can’t eat ice cream out that much since I don’t know what is in it. What I love is chocolate Haagen Dazs ice cream. It doesn’t have anything in it that I can’t have. Sadly, there are not a lot of places near me that carry Haagen Dazs. Yes, I do live in a type of hell in some ways.
If we drive 45-minutes away from our house in either direction we can usually find a store that has it. Sometimes one 20-minutes away. I only have it a couple times a year at this point. Writing that out really makes me sad because that means I only have ice cream once or twice a year. I really need to look harder for ice cream I can eat.
4. What’s your ‘back in my day, we____________________ ‘ story or saying?
Back in the day, we used to ride our scooters down the street in my friend’s small town and when we got too hot, we ran down to the creek behind her house and took a swim and rode the rapids on inflatable inner tubes.
5. Somehow this is our last Hodgepodge in the month of June. Next week’s Hodgepodge lands in July. Wow. Sum up your June using three adjectives.
Relaxing. Overwhelming. Exhausting.
Yes. It was a “hodgepodge” of adjectives. Ha!
6. Insert your own random thought here.
We’ve had horribly hot temps where I live so I haven’t left my house in four days. Extreme heat makes me very sick. Today the temps are supposed to go down so I can leave the house. But I don’t have a car because a tire went flat and we have to replace it. Ah life – full of irony, isn’t it?
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
